CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap Review

The 14th Tribeca Film Festival World Premiere of CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, directed by Robin Hauser Reynolds commenced Sunday, April 19, 2015, 1:00PM at Spring Studios, New York. A special panel discussion immediately followed with director Reynolds, chief learning officer Tamar Elkeles, Qualcomm, chief people officer Auguste Goldman, GoDaddy, and engineering director Jason Wong, Etsy, moderated by Adi Robertson, reporter, The Verge.

CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap is a compelling and provocative documentary that explores America’s history and present day disparity of women and people of color in the technology industry. It features archival footage of early pioneers such as English mathematician Ada Lovelace and U.S. Navy admiral/computer engineer Grace Hopper. In 1836, Lovelace wrote the first algorithm and became the first computer programmer. In 1944, Hopper invented the first compiler program (transforms source code written in a programming language into machine language) and coined the term “debugging.” CODE documentary includes detail interviews with chief technology officer Megan Smith, White House; founder Kimberly Bryant, Black Girls Code; and software engineers Adam Messinger, Twitter, Jocelyn Goldfein, Facebook, Lara Hogan, Etsy, Tracy Chou, Pinterest, and Jen Wang, Yelp.

As I recall in the mid 1980s, a recent graduate in computer science living in New York City, my career as software programmer on the mainframe computers coding COBOL, SAS, and DB2 began to flourish. The truth is, there were very few women and I moved quite often from one corporate entity to another to solidify my place in this industry and blaze my own path.

CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, directed by Robin Hauser Reynolds | A Finish Line Features Production | USA | 2015 | 79 min | Documentary | World Premiere, 14th Tribeca Film Festival. Watch trailer